Boyscout Motto
by Avdal
Summary: "Always be prepared." Those were three words that Jyn had never kept close to her heart, but now they might make all the difference. When she had signed up for this life, she never thought it would leave her where it did: stranded with Cassian by the side of the road in a broken down car.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note:

A gift for rebelle-capitan for the Rebel Captain Network Valentines Fic Exchange based on her prompt: "Jyn and Cassian get snowed in". I absolutely loved this prompt, I'd honestly been wanting to do some sort of 'cuddling in the cold' fic for this duo so I hope you like how it turned out!

* * *

"Call it in, Jyn! Call the damn thing in!"

Their tires spin out on a buried patch of ice, sending their heavy but ill prepared SUV careening in a half-circle before Cassian gets control back. Ahead of them the jeep widens the distance.

Jyn gets tossed about from side to side, clawing at the dashboard and door handle while absolutely ignoring his request.

"Damnit! Call it in, Jyn!"

He grips the steering wheel tightly. So tight the plastic and faux-leather creak under his grip. The jeep spins to the left then the right and he matches it move for move. He doesn't have time to argue with his partner about this, she needs to call the damn case in before they blow it entirely.

"Jyn, call it! We can't keep this up! Call the kriffing base and tell them we're losing him!"

Cassian was a good driver in the snow. A damned good one. That still didn't stop their car from sliding, spinning, and occasionally reaching airborne status as they plough through the snow on the unmaintained mountain road after their target.

"I can- Fuck!" Jyn's whole body lurches up out of her seat as their front tires slam into then out of a deep pothole at breakneck speeds.

Just ahead of them are the tail lights of their prey, the evasive and absolutely infuriating mark they'd been hired to track down. The vehicular part of their chase had been going on for the better part of two hours, and if they can only manage to run him off the road he'll be theirs. They'll have him.

"Ram him, Cas!" Jyn shouts, fumbling with something in her pocket that had _better_ be just her phone. "Ram him and end this! I'm sick of being on this damn road!"

"I'm _trying_."

He doesn't have time to argue the obvious. It takes every ounce of Cassian's concentration to keep them from spiraling out on the deep banks of snow they have to cut through or the icy under layer covering the top of the gravel road

Ahead of them the mark's jeep swerves, its wider wheels gripping far better than their own less agile SUV.

One hit, that's all it would take. One solid hit with their greater mass and they could steer him right into a snow drift and end this cat and mouse game in one go.

"Straight stretch!" Jyn shouts, "gun it!"

From the corner of his eye he can see her holding on the security bar on the roof above the door as their car lunges around another bend. He presses the gas pedal down all the way to the floor. She'll have to hold on. They didn't come this far to drive safely.

They hit the jeep's bumper. Barely. Both cars are going at their maximum and there's not enough momentum to knock him cleanly off the road.

"We need to-"

"Fuck it, Cassian. I'm shooting out his tires."

His head snaps to the side, taking his eyes off the road for just one second to stare in shock at the gun that has suddenly appeared in her hands. He grabs her wrist, holding her in place.

"Jyn, protocol says-"

"Oh fuck protocol! How much longer are we- shit!"

The jeep swerves hard to the right, breaking their bumper to fender connection and taking off on an even smaller and rougher track into the woods.

Cassian jerks the wheel, trying to follow. Their tires skid out fully, sending them into a corkscrew flurry of 180s. Jyn collides against him, her gun flying out of her hands and disappearing into parts unknown at the back of their SUV.

He shouts out a strangled curse in Spanish, elbowing her off of him as he tries to bring the wheels back under control.

Turn into the spin. Almost everyone tries to turn against it. Instinct says to turn against it, but what you really have to do is let it play out and try to stay on the damn road and not wrap yourself around a pine tree.

" _Seatbelt_."

He grits the order under his breath, easing his foot onto the breaks but only tapping them lightly.

The wheels finally slow to a skidding stop as Jyn's belt locks into place. She looks over her shoulder at the road behind them. The tracks from their tires are looped around each other, corkscrewing like the slides at a water park. They'd done so many full crevices that what are the odds of them ending up facing the same way the started?

"You good?" Jyn asks, sounding as breathless as he is.

Good? No. Not yet.

"He's going to get away."

"Yeah."

That's all the confirmation either of them need. Cassian slams the gear shift into reverse and backs up, their rear wheels having more control against the slick and now churned up texture of the road.

The jeep is gone, his wider tracks cutting a deep and clear path to follow through the trees. It's evening and the sun is glaring right in his eyes, but Cassian can see enough. They're going to get him. They didn't come all this way for nothing.

"Do you think we can?"

"Yes. Call it in, though. Last base heard from us we were still back on the main highway. Call and tell them the mission's gone completely sideways and to stay tuned."

He puts the shift into drive and resumes their chase, revving the engine to maximum to make up for lost time.

This new stretch of road, if you can even call the uneven ribbon of marred white ringed by trees on both sides a road, is much rougher than the first. Their wheels skip, the whole frame of their car bouncing on top of unseen rocks and slamming through the drifts.

"This is a bad idea."

It's his turn to say it. His turn to doubt what they're doing.

"We can't let him get away."

"I know."

Yeah, Cassian knows. Their target was one of the most wanted criminals on their list. He was dangerous, but Cassian would really prefer not to find out if he was armed as well. A vehicle take down is the best way. Maybe the only way. They simply need to catch up first.

"No signal."

"What?"

"There's no- damnit!"

Their car bounces again, hitting some unidentified piece of forest debris so hard that they both would have slammed against the dashboard if they both hadn't been wearing their seatbelts. The tracks turn into a blind curve and Cassian steers the wheels into the skid, expertly controlling exactly how their vehicle drifts as it rounds the sharp bend of a hill.

And then it all happens faster than he can see let alone react to.

The jeep rams _them_. Striking nose-first into his side of their front bumper. It hits them at an angle, colliding into their SUV with a force that sends them flying sideways off the road.

The impact jerks Cassian's body so hard that for a few seconds he can't breathe. Can't even think. All he can hear is a loud screeching in his ears of metal bending. Or maybe that's the ringing in his ears. Pain blooms across his forehead and he thinks he must have hit the steering wheel even with his restraints.

Oh. So that's the noise. It's the horn that he's currently fused his face to and can't seem to pull away from.

Then smaller hands grab his shoulders and jerk him back. He blinks at Jyn. Her hair's a tangled web over her face and her lip is split.

 _You're bleeding._

He doesn't know if he says it or thinks it. But when he reaches for her she catches his hand. Her lips move but he can't hear her.

And then a second impact slams into the side of his face.

This time it's from the airbag. It detonates far too late to be of any use and knocks them both out cold on the spot.

* * *

Jyn wakes up first.

She finds herself squashed against the passenger side door, pinned under her own weight and held half-suspended by the crossband of her safety restraint. It takes her a few moments to remember why she's here and not back at her bed on base.

Then everything comes flooding back. The mission. The stakeout. The chase. The _impact_.

She remembers being hit, but it's a confusing, flashing in strobe sort of memory. It tells her nothing about why they're not moving anymore Why they're stopped but sitting sideways. The dashboard is angled up, favoring the driver's side and half of the cracked windshield is buried in snow. Gravity slumps Cassian against her. He's not moving either.

Her heart immediately lurches in her throat, adrenaline forcing out a shocked gasp as she tries to turn to him but her seatbelt locks up and stops her.

"Cas?"

She croaks out his name, her voice sounding both dry and hoarse. He's not moving. Why isn't he moving?!

"Cassian!"

She kicks, flailing as she tries to reach for him but still too out of it to unlock her seatbelt on the first or second attempt. Third time's the charm, though, and she opens it with a heartfelt curse, pain lancing through her joints from being tossed around like a fettered doll during the crash.

The car creaks when she moves, half squatting and half kneeling to make up for the new angle of the floor. When she gets to her partner, she shakes him hard. He doesn't respond. Stays there limp and unmoving, head lolling from side to side as she grips him with both shoulders.

Oh… what can she do? What is she supposed to do? There's a whole checklist of emergency protocols that Cassian himself had drilled into her head for situations exactly like this, but all of that has gone right out of the window the moment she saw him laying there motionless.

"Cassian!" she shouts again, raising her hand up to slap him hard across the face in a last-ditch effort to revive him.

His eyes spring open at the third sound of his name. For a second she stops breathing, staring at him with wide eyes.

Then he mumbles something, one syllable that sounds familiar, and she slumps against him, resting her shaking head against his shoulder as all the adrenaline building up over these last two hours threatens to overcome her

" _Fuck_."

"Jyn? Why-"

"Are you hurt?"

Flinching, she pushes herself off him, kneeling on the seat to lean over him.

His forehead has an angry red bruise blooming across the center but other than that there's no obvious wound. She can taste blood in her own mouth, but there's none on him.

He mumbles something under his breath, shaking his head and trying to pull away. She catches his chin and pulls, looking at his face. His eyes blink clearer with each second.

"Cas? Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

Does he have a concussion? That's what she's really afraid of. He must have hit himself harder than she did because he was out for longer. Would he know if he did? Would she know?

His eyes narrow and he jerks his chin out of her grip.

"Jyn, where is he?"

"Are you hurt?"

"Did he get away? Where is he?"

"Cassian, your forehead is-"

He snatches her extending hand out of the air, trying to pull her forward but getting blocked by his own safety harness.

" _Jyn_. Our mark. Where is he?"

Her scowl at being manhandled fades in an instant.

Outside the sky is still glowing with sunset. She hadn't even noticed in her panic when she woke up. Only a few minutes could have gone by since the crash but the lights of the jeep are already gone.

"Kriff."

Cassian follows her train of thought, sharing in her muttered curse with a more colorful litany of his own. He fumbles with the buckle of his belt, his usual agility muddled slightly with their mutual break in consciousness.

She helps him, grunting as more of his weight slumps against her when he's freed. The angle of their car puts her side lower and when she tries to open her door she can't.

"Stuck. Try your side."

The frame creaks when Cassian's weight leaves it. He stumbles when he exits, falling into the deep drifts of the snow bank they had been rammed into.

"How is it?" Jyn calls out.

She turns on the overhead light to try and find her cellphone in the fading dimness of the vehicle's interior. The electricity still works in their car. That's a good thing, at least.

No answer. The crunch of footsteps. Her hand finds her phone and she looks up, pushing herself up off the dashboard as she climbs out for herself.

"Cass? How is- oh shit."

Crunched to hell and back, that's how their car is. The whole front end is smashed, with the hood crinkled up and bent at sharp angles.

And they're also sitting sideways in a ditch, about a third buried in a snow bank.

Two wide lines of tire tracks wriggle through the white beyond their crashed car. In the distance, in the far distance, she almost thinks that she can hear the sound of a fading engine.

"He's gone."

Cassian's upper lip curls up into a snarl before he can stop it.

"Yes."

"We're stuck."

"...yes."

"Shit."

Cassian growls. She raises and eyebrow before stepping back and letting him have his moment.

The headlights of their car are still on. Maybe, even if the front is smashed up, maybe they can still get it running. Maybe.

"Jyn?"

She frowns at the crumpled hood, trying and failing to remember where the basic essential components of the engine are housed. Do car's really need a radiator anyhow? All _they_ need is to limp back to the main highway and-

"Jyn? Your phone? Did you try it?"

She looks down at the object in her hand. She'd forgotten all about it when she'd seen just how bad the damage to the front was.

A few taps of her thumb. She didn't realize she was shaking until this moment. Whether from the cold or leftover inertia of the moment doesn't matter, but she'd rather Cassian not see that so she turns her back to him as she checks.

"No signal. Not that there would be. We lost the signal back on the highway and that was..."

That was a while ago. A long, long time and distance ago.

"Twenty miles," Cassian answers for her. " _At least_. We must have been chasing him for at least twenty miles.

Jyn flinches. Yeah, that's what she thought. "It's going to be a long night, isn't it?"

Cassian gives her an odd look when she turns back to him. He opens his mouth to speak. A tuft of air blows out from between his lips, fogging in the cold.

"The target." Jyn fills in the blanks when he doesn't say anything. "He's gotten away. He's gone."

Te look he shoots the direction of the tracks tells her everything. Cassian hates to lose damned near as much as she does herself, he just usually hides it better.

She should say something. Something about how this wasn't his fault and he shouldn't beat himself up about this. Dumb, bad luck. That's all.

"Cas… let's get the hell out of here. We'll catch him again. Tomorrow. Now though let's get this wreck going and get the hell out of here."

The expression on his face changes. His jaw tightens and he nods just the once, a stiff jerk of his chin. "I guess we push."

It's a long shot, but maybe… Their car is buried deep in a drift, but the snow is soft enough that it shouldn't be stuck down. However, raw feats of strength aren't exactly Cassian's specialty and they sure as hell aren't hers either.

"Pity Baze or Kay isn't here."

Cassian grunts in answer. Another clue that he's feeling pretty damn sour on the inside about how their grand pursuit literally crashed to a stop.

Being the unnecessary gentleman that he is, or maybe simply because he _is_ the stronger one of their duo, he takes the lower corner, the one buried more deeply in the muck. Leans over the passenger side front bumper and she moves to the driver's.

"On three."

She nods, kicking her boot into the ground to try and gain herself some traction while she waits for his cue.

Then she throws her whole weight into it, clenching her teeth and pushing forward.

The car creaks. Shakes backwards. Shifts maybe an inch. Then their feet slide out from underneath them at nearly the same exact moment and the car settles right back, all their progress lost.

"Fuck!"

Off to her side Cassian rolls his shoulder, wincing slightly. He must have hurt it in the crash and not told her.

"Again?" she asks, flexing her hands and wiping them off on the front of her jeans.

He snorts, kicking a greater swatch of snow back behind him.

"Again."

Hands slip, feet slide, and metal bites where it cools and cuts where it's bent. It's tough, exhausting work but, little by little, their car is eased upward.

In the back of her mind Jyn keeps an ear out, always listening for the returning hum of their target. Would he come back here to finish them off? No. No, he wouldn't dare. For a second she thinks she can almost-

"Fuck! Push harder Jyn! It's slipping!"

She scrambles back, her legs nearly buckling under her as she throws her whole body into these last few inches until the car finally comes to rest flat on the snowy dirt track the jeep had lead them down.

Jyn slumps face down against the hood, panting for breath. _That_ was a real workout, but they did it. They did it

When she pushes herself off Cassian has his hands on his knees, bent over and leaning on only himself for support. He looks up and gives her an exhausted smile.

"We make a good team, Erso."

Her face heats up and she looks away, taking a step back and burying her frozen hands in her coat pockets. They've been working together for just over six months. In that time he's called her many different things and not all of them were either flattering or anything as the sweet little way he sometimes says her last name whenever she's done exceptionally well. And sometimes he calls her that when he's highly pissed off at her. It's all situation dependent.

"We should go," she says, spinning slowly in a full circle and waiting for him to get in their SUV first while she collects her thoughts.

The sky is getting darker, turning from the bright and fiery colors of full sunset to the richer shades of early twilight. This had been… this day had been absolutely fucked. Tense and full of adrenaline and hunting and pouncing. All that massive effort and they still lost their prey in the end.

But Cassian had made what would have normally been a critical case of abject failure into a situation almost approaching bearable. He'd offered humor when they were on hour seventeen of their surveillance stakeout and she'd started to lose her inner calm in the back of their car. He'd been serious when they'd lined up their trap and Jyn's faith in herself had started to waver. And then he'd been all business throughout the chase. Throughout the whole multi hour car chase that took them out into the literal definition of the middle of nowhere. Without him, Jyn was sure that her patience would have snapped hours ago and she would have done something sloppy and messy and possibly gotten herself and those around her hurt Or worse.

Is that what you call a rock? He was her rock? Maybe, though that's as clichéd as it comes. He certainly is her voice of reason, and that's a factor Jyn's well aware that she sorely needs in her life.

When she looks at him, the trees and fading light reflected on the cracked windshield and obscuring most of his expression, her shoulders slump. He's going to beat himself up about this, isn't he? Blame himself for their mark getting away after all that effort they'd put in to catch him?

The way this evening could have gone but didn't is something that he did right. She'll have to tell him that later.

"You like all this fresh mountain air?"

Cassian's voice is tired when she flops herself back into the passenger seat. She looks over at him and he's scratching his chin with the back of his hand.

"Just… lost in my own head. It's been a hell of a day but I haven't seen the mountains up this close in years."

He nods but falls silent. Jyn frowns. Fidgets with the tab on her seatbelt but doesn't draw it across her body.

Cassian turns on the engine. It clicks but it doesn't catch. She looks at him and he looks at her.

"No."

She swallows, her fingers twitching with wan to help somehow.

"Try it again."

He does. Click. Click click click.

Cassian pauses. Looks up over the crumpled hood. There's nothing there. Nothing but more snow and the upside-down reflection of trees across bent metal.

"Cas?"

He shifts, back straightening, and tries it again.

The clicks burst rapid fire and then Cassian abruptly yanks the keys free of the ignition.

"Fuck!"

Jyn frowns. "What's-"

"Do you smell gas?"

His question makes her pause. Take a moment to really think and pay attention. She… she does, actually. Not strongly, but it's there. A stupid thing to miss but with everything that had been going on both of them had completely overlooked it.

Jyn is the first one out, her feet sinking back into the thoroughly broken up snow . Cassian looks under the front of the SUV, leaning his weight with on one hand against the frame.

It's dark, but Jyn can still clearly see the dark puddle pooled under where the SUV had first sat before they'd pushed it back out of the ditch. It's not a lot but… but it's enough.

She exhales sharply, her hand automatically flying up to clutch her necklace in that stupid gesture she can't quite control. The one that makes her feel like a blushing Victorian matron clutching her pearls.

" _No_."

She looks over her shoulder at Cassian. Her hand immediately dropping into her coat pocket.

So he sees it too. Or maybe it looks worse from his perspective, but they both know what this means. The gas tank is busted. They're not going anywhere.

"Fuck." He pushes off the hood and stomps toward her. Jyn's back stiffens out of reflex.

"We're-"

"Yeah."

He glares at the pool of melted snow. It looks ink dark in the evening light.

So what now?

He mutter a curse again, this time much more bitterly than before.

Jyn pauses, watching him silently as he turns in a circle, taking in the scene. He doesn't usually act like this. Not him. Taking bad news poorly is more her repertoire.

"So we're stuck," she finally says, breaking the silence. "We're going to have to walk out of here,"

Cassian refuses to look at her. Glares at the ground or the trees or anywhere but at her. His jaw is tight, lips pulled into a thin line like he's biting back his words.

Is he angry at her? Why would he be angry at her? This is no more her fault than his.

"Do you have your phone?" he asks, hand outstretching robotically.

She pulls it out of her pocket, switching it on with a swipe of her thumb. No signal. Of course.

"There's not-"

He snatches it out of her hand, glaring at the screen as if he doesn't believe her. Jyn feels her hackles rise up at that but, before she can say anything to retort, Cassian turns sharply and walks away, struggling through the deeper drifts along the edges of the road as he makes his way towards the nearby hill. The hill they'd gotten blindsided on.

She'd meant it when she'd said there wasn't a signal and hadn't been for gods know how long.

Whatever. If he wants to be bitter and get soaking wet struggling through the knee deep snow that's his business. For Jyn's part, she's going to try and find a way out of this mess before night hits.

Well what are their options? None, basically. Unless they happen to hear another vehicle, highly unlikely given the pristine snow they'd been ploughing through, then they have to walk out. It's as simple as that.

Jyn takes a deep breath, counting to ten, and then looks around again, this time really studying where they are. Twenty miles from the nearest highway. Some sort of national forest road their target apparently knew like the back of his hand while they had fuck-knows no idea where they were as they chased him along the hairpin bends of the mountain track. In the near distance Jyn can faintly make out the tips of higher mountains where they peak through the treeline. A few of them are tall enough to even catch the final rays of the setting sun.

There truly is nothing here. Only snow and trees and more and more of them both.

Cassian's gone out of sight, too, and that makes her irrationally nervous. Everything is… none of this is familiar. None of the wilderness or letting herself get ambushed or even Cassian's sudden development of a bad attitude.

Now, when he's not here, she feels his absence far more than she would like. She can hear everything around her and there's nothing to hear. Only the wind in the pine boughs high above her head. No reassuring tune on the radio or the deafening blast of their engine as it's pushed to the max.

No. None of that. Nothing they need. Now it's just them, all alone, out in the great beyond.

That's the bad news and there's a lot of it. But there's some good news, too. They're not hurt. Not really, some bumps and bruises aside. And the path back is obvious. All they have to do is follow the dark, winding lines that their car and the jeep had cut through the terrain.

Except, to add one more complication they absolutely don't need, it's starting to snow again. Not heavily, just a few fluffy flakes that shift in the breeze like fireflies on their way down. But the sky is getting darker with more than the coming of night.

"Clouds are moving in."

Jyn jumps at the low sound of Cassian's voice. She'd been getting lost in her own little world again, her mind torn halfway between the sting of losing their target and the worry about what the next leg of their journey will bring.

He sets a gloved hand on her shoulder, steadying her and never missing a clue to what she's thinking. The look in his eyes is apologetic but it quickly turns hard as he watches her.

"Jyn?"

"Yeah, we need to get going Sooner the better."

She goes to the rear of their car. They don't have much in the way of supplies, certainly nothing that she would dare consider "survival gear", but they'll have to make due.

"Jyn? What are… you can't mean you want to leave? Another storm is coming in. We're going to stay put right here."

She pauses mid-movement, her hands hovering above their duffel bag full of prisoner restrains and their work supplies. Then she shoots him a pointed look, knowing that her raised eyebrow even in the dimness will convey all that she means to say.

One of his hands reaches out to her and she shrugs it away.

"Jyn, I'm not trying to be bossy-"

"Could have fooled me."

He sighs, a fresh tuft of steam parting from his lips.

"Jyn… we should stay here. _I_ think we should stay here." He catches her elbow, takes the now-empty duffel out of her hand. "Tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll leave, alright? It's not wise for us to go out now."

Jyn looks down at their paltry supplies. They don't even have a proper blanket for kriffssakes. Just a tarp and a large beach towel shoved into the far corner of the trunk. He has a point. It's getting colder and darker by the minute, they don't really know where they are, not truly, and the falling snow has picked up into a pace that could now be called a light flurry.

But she also really wants to get out of here. This place is cursed. Too strange and unfamiliar.

It doesn't seem to bother him, though. Maybe the chase and the crash have spooked her. It's nothing. She should trust Cassian's judgment. It hasn't lead them wrong once.

Reluctantly Jyn nods, stepping back and letting him steer her aside so he can grab the towel and close the trunk up behind them.

"So… we sleep in the car then?"

Jyn's survival experience has been limited to seeing an episode or two of Man Vs Wild on an in-flight entertainment system many years ago. Cassian seems to have at least a cursory better knowledge than she does, so she's going to have to defer to his guidance. His eyes soften as he takes n her worried expression and he shrugs, reminding her that maybe this isn't such a bad idea after all. "We've done worse, Jyn."

Yeah, they certainly have. Much worse. Gone on miserably long stakeouts that would sometimes last for _days_. Trapped together in the back of a surveillance van, or hiding out in the elements on a rooftop. Or even, in one particularly memorable scenario, having to perch on a narrow fire escape, intertwined, awkward, and waiting waiting waiting for the exact moment to strike and take down their mark. That experience had done much to strip away any of the self-consciousness that had once existed between them.

When she looks over at Cassian, his expression is thoughtful and guarded. That's his problem, always too much in his head. This moment, this whole day, has been far too serious. What they both need is to lighten up.

When she raises her eyebrow, Cassian studies every nuance of her face. And he beats her to her own punchline.

"What can I say, Erso, I've always wanted to get you alone in the backseat of our car."

She grins, having to look away from him when her cheeks start to heat up.

"Oh, is that how it is?" she asks. "What, did the near-death experience turn you on?"

There's definitely some joke about getting rammed that she could make, but she's going to save that for when she needs the heavy guns.

"What? No smart-assed comeback? I feel a little cheated, Erso."

It's a challenge. A verbal challenge. Jyn shakes her head, relieved enough that the mood has finally turned that she's willing to concede defeat just this once.

She opens up one of the back doors and starts tossing loose items into the front to clear up a space for them. Cassian goes to the back and starts pulling out any of their few items that might be useful.

When the preparations such as they are been done, a quiet falls between them. They stand outside, shoulder to shoulder and leaning against the frame of their crashed car as they look out against the backdrop of moonlit snow and the black spires of the pines.

The moon is nearly full, two or three more days, so at least the wilderness around them is brightly lit even through the layers of clouds above them. Snow is falling steadily now, enough so that the imprints of the jeep's tracks are beginning to be covered over.

"I can't believe that he got away," Cassian mutters, following her line of vision to the disappearing trail of their prey.

Jyn sidles a little closer and he looks down. Something is really bugging him, isn't it?

She bumps her shoulder against him, trying to get him to shrug his dark mood off.

"Not your fault. Not my fault, but definitely not yours. And we'll get him. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but we'll get him. We always do."

Cassian smiles down at her. She can feel it more than she can see it. His breath is warm against her face.

"It's going to be a cold night. That one towel is all we've got."

"Guess we'll have to cuddle up then."

Back when their relationship as coworkers was strictly professional they wouldn't have even considered the notion of sharing such a close space, but now desperate times and all that…

When Jyn looks back to him, he's still staring at her. Not at the moon or the forest, but at her. And he won't look away even when she stares right back. There have always been so many different undercurrents in their relationship, but one of the strongest was this: this constant battle of wills. Two hard-headed people who refuse to admit that they've met their match.

She narrows her eyes and raises an eyebrow. Yeah, even if he can't see that, she's sure that he can feel it, too.

"Ready to call it a night?" she asks, gaze never wavering.

"Alright."

"We should go in."

Cassian steps back but holds her stare, continuing the unspoken faceoff between them. Then he opens the rear door and gestures with a sweep of his arm.

"Ladies first."

Again she feels her face heat up. This, _this_ , is why Bodhi doesn't like going on stakeouts with them anymore. All this underlying tension between them. Well, that and the fact that their missions so often seem to randomly end in a car chase or firefight, but the constant 'are you just looking or are finally going to do something about it' that's always simmering in the background.

Fine then, she'll be the bigger person again. No sense in freezing to death out here because of a staring match.

With a speculative pout, she breaks their standoff and scoots inside.

* * *

"So how do you want to- oh, ohhhkay."

Jyn cuddles right in, snuggling backwards until she's pressed herself tight up against him. A brief discussion had taken place earlier about whether they would be more comfortable staying in the front seats in full recline, but Jyn had thought that would be too much like sleeping on an airplane and she wanted to lie down flat. Cassian had kept his great amusement to himself that she was so short she could actually lay across the back seats without having to touch either of the sides.

It was cute. Her vertical challenge was adorable, but his shins had learned long ago not to poke fun out loud about her stature.

"Comfortable?" she asks, shimmying into the natural place she fitted along his front.

Well no, not exactly. For several different reasons.

"Perfectly. You're sure you're… okay with this?"

He'd wanted to spoon her when they'd first come to this sleeping arrangement, but surprise not surprise, Jyn had decided to spoon herself against him

"Mhmmm..."

It's a low sound, one that's almost lost in the steady faint patter of snow falling on their roof. He drapes their towel-turned blanket around them, covering her up more than himself and hoping she doesn't notice.

Jyn's not used to the cold. Not like he is. He's not exactly an outdoorsman himself but, come on, surely sleeping in the debatable comforts of their wrecked car is better than being out there in the black?

Cassian tucks the blanket in tight around her neck, sealing in a cocoon of warming air, before settling down with his head propped up on his hand.

He still can believe that she'd wanted to walk out. She'd actually wanted to go that evening. And do what, get caught up in this storm?

He'd gotten angry at her for that. For everything that he's come to admire about his partner during their short time together, there are easily ten more things that drive him up the wall about her. Her reckless lack of concern for her own wellbeing, reckless to the point that it bordered on self-destructive, was probably at the top of that list. That, and her short fuse and even shorter trigger finger. She's going to get herself killed one day.

Few things can get under Cassian's skin more than that. More than Jyn Erso acting like her life's not really all that valuable.

Or Jyn Erso sighing softly as she snuggles in close to him. Close, closer, closest. Until her cute little butt backs up right against him. Lucky for her, maybe for them both, that she didn't meet him five years ago when that kind of stunt would have provoked an unavoidable response.

"You're warm."

Jyn's low and husky murmur makes him raise a brow. That had to be deliberate. She's too purposeful for it not to be.

"Are you trying to provoke me, Erso?"

She huffs merrily at his stern tone, wriggling her backside against him until he has to stop her with a firm hand on her hip.

"You've gotten awfully quiet, Captain."

Captain. Yes. It's his official title in their agency, though he can't remember even once using it to pull rank on his team.

"Maybe I'm trying to sleep," he answers.

"Maybe? Maybe you've been awfully quiet ever since the crash. So… what's on your mind?"

He swallows and her head moves itself against him like she's a cat trying to scratch herself on his chin.

How much should he tell her about the trouble he's starting to think they might really be in? He doesn't want to worry her, but she should also know how much there's really at stake.

"Cassian?"

Right. He doesn't want to worry her but his silence has done exactly that.

"I couldn't get a signal, Jyn. Up on the hill. Not even close. Didn't see anything either, not that there was much to see."

She falls still again him. For a moment or two he can only hear the sound of her breathing. Then she speaks again, the movement of it sending vibrations through her back and into his chest.

"Is _that_ it, Cas? You're worried about not being able to call for help? Yeah, we already knew that. I thought you were freaking out about losing our mark."

Well, that too. But Cassian's starting to get a bad feeling about this. One that he's having a harder and harder time to shake off.

When he doesn't answer she sighs, slumping against him and banging his chin with the top of her head.

"Cassian… We're fine. We'll be fine. Walk out of here tomorrow. No problems."

"But-"

"They'll be looking for us, Cas." She turns her head to the side to look at him, only her profile illuminated in the dark. "Someone doesn't come home, it's all hands dropping what they're doing until they're found. That's our rule. They'll find us or we find them. Seriously, you worry too damn much."

Mother hen. Sometimes she's called him that. They've _all_ called him that. And maybe he is but that's his job. He's their leader and he has to worry about them when they won't worry for themselves.

"What if-" He starts to say his concerns but stops himself. What if they leave and get lost? It's a long way back to the highway. Miles and miles of snowed over national forest roads criss-crossing this mountain range worse than a maze. What if they leave and get caught out in another blizzard? What if the others don't know where to even start finding them?

How could they know, really? The last they'd called in had been back when the car chase first started.

No. Cassian keeps all those thoughts to himself and simply holds his partner tighter. It's because it's dark. Everything seems different in the dark. Larger than life.

"Goodnight Erso," he mumbles into the top of her head. She immediately tightens up in his arms.

"Erso?" she huffs. "Are you mad at me then?"

Yes. A little.

"No."

"You are."

" _No_."

"You _are_."

He rubs her shoulder with his thumb, trying to distract them both. The last thing they need is to have an argument out here and now.

"Okay, maybe I'm angry. Maybe. Just play it safe, okay? Think before you act for a change."

She scoffs, her head falling back down again the crook of his arm. He doesn't have to be able to see her face to know that she's rolling her eyes. Mama hen indeed.

"You take everything way to seriously, Cap'n."

He does. He knows this. He does because he has to and no one else will.

"Maybe you're too reckless, Erso."

He can practically hear the cogs in her head turning. Then she starts wriggling against him again, backing him up until he's pressed firmly against the cushions of the backseat and there's no place left for him to hide from her rump.

"You know what would _really_ help keep us warm?"

This is the problem with having a partner like her. Someone who enjoys trying to wind him up simply for her own wicked sense of amusement.

His hand goes back to controlling her hip, preventing her from grinding him into a response.

"Goodnight, Erso."

She chirps. It's not quite a giggle, not exactly a laugh. But it's a noise almost as adorable as she is short.

"You sure, Andor? It might be a _long_ night up here. We might need to find some way to pass the time until morning."

Cassian has to fight the random urge to flip her over and spank her. Discipline his wayward subordinate for being so damn hardheaded about getting what she wants. And he genuinely has no idea how Jyn would he react if he did. It almost makes dealing with the fallout worthwhile just to find out.

But, satisfying as that would be, it would also be highly inappropriate.

" _Goodnight_ , Erso," he repeats

He pushes her away from him. Not far, but just enough of a sliver of space between them to make his point. Then he lets her snuggle back into the covers and waits for her to fall asleep first.

Outside it's quiet. Maybe too quiet. All he can hear is the sounds of wind in the trees and falling snow heralding an omen for tomorrow.

* * *

Author's Note:

Okay okay okay I hope?

Seriously, I'm crazy about this prompt. I know it's maybe not quite in the spirit of these fic exchanges to do it as a multi-chapter piece, but I hopefully made this first chapter self-contained enough that it fulfills the prompt as it is… But it's already 7k words and I still have a lot more of the story I'd like to write so I hope everyone who read this and liked it will check to chapters 2 and 3 when I post them. I've got everything outlined out and I'm aiming for a one a week update so next time will be on the 21st so I hope to see you all there! 333


	2. Full Circle

Cassian knew better.

That was the worst part of all of this: he knew better, and he let it happen anyhow. It was his fault alone that they were in this situation at all. Because he was in charge and his team's safety should always be his first and foremost priority. Them, not some karking mark with a lead foot and a cheap value to the concept of human life.

That was what had kept him up that first night. Other things as well, but his guilty conscience had been by far the loudest. For kriffsakes, he grew up in the snow. Was practically cold-blooded. So just where in the hell did he get off chasing a target through the middle of nowhere with no backup or contingency plan?

It's winter in the high mountains. How stupid and reckless was it for him to take them up this road? Yeah, sure, they'd been tracking their target for so long and this was their first real chance at him.

Not good enough. Simply not good enough. They should have waited. Let him get away, there will always be another day.

Be prepared. Always be prepared.

He should have had a backup for _her_ , at least, if not to save his own skin.

She's shivering in her sleep, but she's asleep. It had been a long, long night, but he was glad that one of the two of them had managed to get a little rest in. They're going to need it for the day ahead.

Walking out of here? It's not going to be easy. May not be possible, even.

Cassian wraps the towel around her tighter, pulling the plastic tarp over them both from where it had slipped down as she tossed and turned.

The night had been… very grim. They'd had to resort to increasingly uncomfortable measures as the deepest of the cold had set in after midnight. Sometime between three and four in the morning they'd gotten to the point that bundling themselves up in a blue plastic security tarp like some sort of crackly hillbilly Swiss roll had become a reality.

The heater had saved them from the absolute worst of it. It was powered off the battery, not the engine, so it had a finite lifetime but without it and each other's bodyheat Cassian would have probably been walking out of here with fewer toes than he'd started.

And finally, after a seemingly endless period of darkness, today had arrived. Today.

Today they leave. They walk out of here or die trying. It's almost time. Almost dawn. The first hints of brightness are building up the contrast outside, letting him begin to see the shapes of the trees that surround them.

They'd moved from the back to the front because it was closer to the heating vents. Cuddling for warmth had been extra awkward in the uneven space, requiring more than a little amount of wedging in bodyparts around each other.

Does that sound like fun? Okay, maybe there had been a few moment when Cassian didn't mind it. And Jyn had kept cracking jokes, bless her, to break up some of the awkward tension of her literally bouncing up and down on his lap as she settled in on top of him. Or accidentally hitting the horn with her ass when she rolled over in her sleep. The whole SUV would sway with their ungainly movements and gods, what a sight they would have made from the outside.

The windows are fogged over but even through their distorted haze the sight of the rising sun is one of the most welcome spectacles that he's ever seen.

It had been a grim night. Had he not made that clear enough? It had been a _grim night_.

Cassian starts to move, starts to brace himself to go out and see the truth of the situation. Jyn mumbles a query, her voice muffled by layers of terrycloth and plastic as she cuddles in tighter against him.

"Shhh..."

He carefully lifts her by her shoulders, sliding himself out from underneath her. She yawns and blinks, half scooting and half crawling off his lap and back onto the passenger's side. The burrito blanket crackles, leaving a fine dust of electric blue plastic in its wake.

* * *

When Cassian steps out he'd forgotten what cold really was.

If the car had been frigid, the great wide open was absolutely _glacial_. He hadn't checked what the temperature was from their car's dash panel because what good would that really do? But this easily felt like deep into the negative digits. His breath plumes out, those first few difficult inhales dilling his lungs with a distantly familiar cold burn.

As he works his way towards that nearby hill, the snow sinks up to his knees. In some places it's even deeper, like on the eastbound side where the wind had brought the drifts down to settle. The tire tracks are gone. Both their own and from the Jeep's. Cassian had known to expect that, but it still was a hit to see it. Without those to guide them back to the highway, their exodus is going to be that much harder when it was already edging at impossible.

The air is still, though. No wind and the sky is an even and optimistic flush of pinking dawn.

They'd been very lucky. The blizzard could have been much worse and, luck willing, there won't be any more storms.

"Kriff."

The sapling, a thin, birch sapling from a tree only a year or two old, breaks off in his hands when he grabs it to steady himself as he works his way up the steep hillside. It's that cold. Everything is covered in a sheen of ice and tree limbs bow ominously, struggling with the fresh burden that had been laid upon them overnight.

There's a certain peace to this, despite the circumstances. He and Jyn are completely alone out here. Alone because nobody else is stupid enough to be here now. But, if he disregards that thought, the solitude isn't entirely bad. Like Jyn had put it, at least the company was good.

And the fight to the top of the hill was worth it. Dawn is progressing rapidly, the sky brightening to a luminous overcast. Not exactly the clear blue skies he had been hoping for, but better than it could be.

It's clear enough that he can see for miles. A rolling, sprawling mountain range of spellbinding beauty and nothingness. It fills him with such a sense of contradiction. To be someplace so beautiful and be so utterly at a disadvantage. What, did he expect to see? A house? A hunting lodge? A hidden resort? Even seeing the main road in all its far away challenge would have been more welcome than this grand sprawl of futility.

When he flicks on her phone, of course there's nothing. No signal. Not even a blip or an X indicating that it think there might be a ghost of an echo of a reflection of a hint of a signal. The blank screen might as well have said 'give up, you unlucky fucker, you're all kinds of screwed'.

But it's going to be _okay_. It has to be. No need to panic. Panic is the opposite of what he should be feeling. Stay calm, cool, collected. He needs to be the opposite of Jyn because she won't be any of those things. She wants to be a bundle of momentum, charging headfirst down this hill because, oh yeah, they can just walk out of here. Why not, right?

As if on cue, he hears the sound of a door slamming in the near distance below him. Jyn's form, a dark blob of her black and teal coat, stumbles. Her shorter legs struggle a bit more than his did in the deep drifts.

And she looks at him for a second, too far away to see her expression but he knows they both know. Both of them are just checking that the other is still there. Then the dark teal shuffles off, heading out of sight around a cluster of pines and snow-covered underbrush.

Ah, right, nature calling. Even if he can't see anything from this distance, Cassian turns to face the other way just to be polite. Looks at the phone again. 7:47 in the morning. Nearly eight and it's only now getting light. The winters out here don't play around, do they?

Nothing to be had for it, nothing at all. Only one choice so they might as well get on with it and let the whims of fate and luck drift them where they may.

* * *

"Don't say it, Cassian. Please don't say it."

They had been gathering up their supplies, the very little of them that they had, and Jyn had found a present: an old bottle of whiskey. The cheap stuff. Not his brand and, judging by the way that her nose had wrinkled up as she regarded it, holding the neck of the bottle between her thumb and forefinger like a run over frog, it sure wasn't hers either.

"Baze or Bodhi's?" she asks, dropping it into their duffel bag.

Cassian frowns, shaking his head but choosing his battles. And why not take some liquor with them on their trek? They had that, a few bottles of water, a snack bar -singular-, and some bags of nuts. The end.

"Why do you think it's either of theirs?"

He debates whether to take the blue plastic tarp. It's heavy and bulky and… and his instincts are telling him to take it. They're telling him something else as well, but he's not quite ready to come to terms with that quite yet.

Forget it. It will just slow them down. They need to travel light and make time today.

"Because Chirrut has better taste. I'm betting Baze. I'd pay to see Bodhi drink cheap whiskey. Pay _good_ money."

A smile pulls at his lips. The sight of Bodhi drunk is an infrequent but frankly kind of adorable treat. He truly is one of those rare finds that even half a beer is enough to turn him into a red-faced lush. Still, Jyn's hearty enthusiasm strikes Cassian as having more to it than meets the eye.

"You're in an awfully chipper mood, Erso. You are aware that today is quite possibly going to be one of the most challenging of our lives, right?"

"Hmmm..."

She steps back, flexing and closing her hands to try and get the circulation back into them.

Again and again he looks over the sparse contents of their trunk. Compares and contrasts it to the even sparser contents of their duffel bag. Then he turns, facing out into the great white open. They don't have what they need for this. Not even close.

"Cassian?"

The playful tone of Jyn's voice is gone. She shifts to stand next to him, her chin having to tip up higher to follow his line of sight into the sky.

He shakes his head, a frown tugging at his lips. The sky is grey. A bright, even sort of grey, but it's not clear.

"Twenty miles," he says.

She bumps him with her shoulder, edging in closer.

"You're worried we're not going to make it."

He watches her as she squints, studying his face. She doesn't get it. Doesn't have a clue how bad this could go wrong. Jyn is his responsibility, not his burden. He has that sinking feeling. A creeping, crawling voice in the back of his head that's just getting louder and louder.

"You think I'm being paranoid," he says after a few breaths. Trying to put his thoughts into words. "I have a bad feeling about this."

Her eyes drift laterally, scanning the forest before settling on the nearly invisible tracks of their car from the night before.

"I did back then, too. When we were chasing him. Now I'm just _cold_. I want to get out of here."

He struggles with processing her words. They both want the same thing, but his instincts are telling him something and they're getting louder and louder by the second as the still of the dawn begins to pick up into the bracing breeze of an intimidatingly frigid morning.

"We don't have any better choices," he finally agrees, "so let's go."

He slams the trunk closed, locking their car with the remote fob just for old time's sake, before they start walking back down that steep mountain road.

* * *

Getting lost had happened in increments.

There hadn't been a big 'oh shit' moment. It had started off small: a fork in the road about half an hour after they set out. Do they go left or do they go right? Maybe they made the wrong choice, or maybe that had happened later at a different decision later on.

It was these little things that fucked them over big time. Basic missteps here and there, each one nearly insignificant on its own. However, when all their blunders were summed together, they melded into a problem of literally life and death magnitude.

"Do you remember-" Jyn starts to say.

" _N_ _o_."

Cassian normally doesn't cut her off like this. He's always the patient one of their duo while she typically charges in head first and with manners as a distant second. Rudeness and a short temper were not part of his usual wheelhouse.

But, to be fair to him, this wasn't the first time Jyn had asked this exact question.

Does he remember driving here on their way up? The answer for them both had been a distinct 'no'. A no with a uselessly accurate justification to match. No, this boulder by the side of the road doesn't look familiar. But they had been going 60 plus miles per hour and were far more focused on their mark and keeping their wheels on the ground rather than sightseeing. No, he doesn't remember if this stretch was going flat or uphill. Uphill then being their downhill now. No, she can't remember this tight hairpin curve. They'd _all_ been tight hairpin curves, especially when the adrenaline had been surging and she'd been getting thrown from side to side of her seat while simultaneously trying to load her gun to shoot out their target's tires.

They just hadn't been paying attention, okay? Jyn remembers that the highway was at the bottom of this mountain many, many miles ago. Therefore, they need to head downhill.

So they headed downhill.

Except directly down was sometimes cliffs or impassable ice-covered scree. This trouble was compounded exponentially by there being a whole maze of roads out here, each one marked by nothing except a pristine white smooth surface. The heavy snowfall of the night had eradicated the tracks, leaving them with nothing but their own sense of direction to guide them.

Ahead of her Cassian stumbles, tripping against some buried obstruction. He curses sharply and corrects himself, not giving her a second look. He's getting frustrated. So is she, but for once she's the one hiding it better.

When she gets to the spot herself she sees why he got so angry. There's a broken tree branch buried under the snow. That's what he'd tripped on and it's not just some narrow switch, it's a genuinely large piece of a broken tree, bigger in girth than her leg.

There's no way they would have missed this when they were driving, no matter how distracted they'd been at the time.

"Let's rest for a moment, okay?" she calls out to him.

He steps jerkily twice more than stops. A tenseness is visible to the line of his shoulders even through his thick parka. Again, Jyn gets it. He wants to keep moving. They _need_ to keep moving.

But she's also freezing her ass off, her lungs are burning from the thinness of the frigid air up this high, and the constant steady wind blowing snow in her face is threatening to really piss her off.

In short, time for a snack and bottle break.

The grim look on Cassian's face as he watches her take sip of the whiskey tells her all she needs to know.

"We're in trouble," she says, passing the bottle over to him.

He nods, mouthing the word 'yes' without saying it out loud. When its his turn to drink, he doesn't flinch from the harsh burn like she did.

"Gods Cassian- _don't_." Don't beat yourself up. Don't worry so much. "We'll be alright. This will all be alright."

"We're lost, Erso."

"We're on a road, _Andor._ All roads have to lead somewhere."

"That's not-"

"Yes, it _is_. Now let's rest for a second and figure this out."

He wants to protest. The tightness in his jaw tells her that much. But then his expression softens when she shifts in closer to him, tucking herself in under one of his arms. If he's just gong to stand there looking glum, she might as well use him for her convenience as a human windbreak, right?

She breaks their singular granola bar in half, thinking out loud that it won't do them much good but maybe it will give them a little bit of energy. Cassian rewards her with an edutainment lecture on how digestion provides metabolic heat.

"Wow, The More You Know."

She says it sing-song, her voice chiming and being carried away by the gusting winds.

"Such a pain in my ass, Erso."

There's warmth to his voice. The only thing warm for miles.

Okay, this is good. He's smiling again, even if it's largely a pained smile because did she mention how terribly cold it is? No, it stopped being cold sometime last night. This is more second coming of an ice age, put your perishables in a refrigerator to keep them _warm_ kind of cold.

"More booze?" she offers

It burns down her throat and she only takes a little sip. Just enough to thaw her nerves and Cassian shakes his head, declining his turn.

"Better hold onto it. Things don't get better out here, we're going to need it."

She plops the bottle back into their small bag of belongings and he pulls the strap off her shoulder, insisting on carrying it himself. They have a brief tug of war before she lets go.

* * *

"Godsfuckingkrffing _damnit_ is this cold!"

Jyn tries to huddle in deeper into the rocky nook they come to rest in, but then that just brings her in closer contact with the frozen surface of the boulder. Every part of her that touches it cold burns even through all her layers of clothes.

Cassian grunts an agreement, tucking his fur collar back in tight against his neck. He stands between her and the exposed air, taking the worst of the brunt of it upon himself. Even now when they're frozen, lost, and half-hypothermic, Cassian still seems to have a persistent sense of chivalry. Normally that would tick Jyn off, but right now she's just too damn cold not to accept any shred of assistance that she can get.

"We should eat again," Cassian says.

Jyn can barely hear him over the roar of the winds which are being funneled loudly all around them.

She shakes her head. She's not hungry. She's not thirsty. She's not- okay, she _is_ tired. But she's not going to stop. Not if they want to get out of here today, and there simply aren't enough words in the English language to express how badly she wants to get out of this frozen hellscape before dark.

"Eat something," he insists. "We need it to stay warm."

The lower half of his face obscured by his collar, and she watches as he pats himself down, eventually finding the small bag of salted almonds that represents their last piece of food. They really hadn't come well prepared for this, had they?

When he fails to tear the bag open she pulls off her glove and does it for them feeling a slight flush of relief that yes, all five of her fingers are still there. At least on that hand.

Then she eats them one at a time, savoring the salty fattiness of them. They instantly lift her mood, bringing her out of her gloomy mindset. Funny how doing even something as tiny as getting out of the worst of the winds and having a few calories is enough to make her feel nearly human again.

"You look like you're having a good time there, Erso."

From the very little she can see of Cassian's face, she's pretty sure he's trying to smile.

"What? Was I making an 'O' face?"

She pops another precious almond into her mouth and theatrically rolls it between her tongue and upper teeth, flicking at it and trying to make a come-hither expression despite her frozen-stiff facial muscles.

Cassian snorts, yanks down his cowl just enough to shove a handful of the nuts into his own mouth.

"I'll put it this way, Jyn: lucky that was the last of them or I might start to get jealous."

She grins. It hurts. Her lips are getting chapped no matter how much Burt's Bees she keeps smearing on.

"You know what, Cas? It's good that we can still joke with each other even when shit goes down like this. Without you, I'd probably be in real danger of losing my sense of wonderment with the world right about now."

He snuggles her a little closer, blocking out more of the roaring winds.

"Without you, Erso, I probably would have frozen. Last night was cold as death even with both of us and the heater."

Well whose fault was that? She'd made him an offer and he'd refused it, the selfish blackheart.

"I _told_ you we should have shagged, Cassian. That would have really warmed us up. Endorphins are the powerhouses of the human body, or haven't you heard?"

Rather than correcting her, he reaches out and grabs her hand, clumsily pulling her glove back on for her then linking their fingers together.

"Let's get out of here, it's too cold to stand around."

Just to put on a token show of resistance, she drags her feet a little, lagging as they start to move.

"You sure you don't want to stick around a little longer and watch me suck on your salty nuts?"

Now _t_ _hat_ earns her a mightily dark look.

" _Move it_ , Erso."

She grins, her lips chap, and it's totally worth it just to see that look on his face.

* * *

At a certain grim point in their journey they'd had no choice but to turn around.

It had taken them a while, most of the day really, until they were ready to finally admit defeat and come to terms with the truth of their situation. They need to go back. There's no going forward out of here. Not today.

Cassian keeps a firm grip on her hand as they go. The winds had stopped but now the snow was falling in earnest. Jyn wasn't sure which one was worse.

Okay, that's not true. The winds were definitely worse. They had lashed at her skin, nearly pushed her off her feet, and sapped every possible bit of heat away from the surface of her body.

Compared to that, the snow was better, but only by somewhat. Now they have to 'post hole'. Jyn had never heard of that term until Cassian told her, but it was extremely accurate: the snow drifts were getting deep enough that every step they took left a hole behind you could bury a post in. Knee deep at a minimum, sometimes even more. It slowed down their progress to a crawl and brought with it an even more unwanted and alarming side effect: so much snow was falling so heavily that their visibility was getting cut down to barely a few meters in any direction.

"Do you know what this is called?"

Cassian has to ask her the question three times before she can hear it. All her thoughts had been dominated by the dual tasks of crunching snow and moving forward, difficult step by difficult step.

"Don't tell me," she says, "this new shitstorm has something to do with 'snow blind'? Like, there's so much snow falling that we're practically blind?"

"Whiteout," he answers. "This is called a whiteout because we can only see white since-"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. You know any creative names for frostbite, Mr Bigshot Mountain Man?"

He seems to think about it for a moment, then gives her a side-eye. Her heart sinks. It must be pretty bad if he's thinking twice about telling her.

"Out with it," she says, "whatever it is can't hardly be worse than 'whiteout', 'post holing', and 'metabolic heat'."

"Limb death?"

Jyn stumbles, tripping over some unseen sub-surface obstruction, and Cassian pulls her up deftly.

"Oh fuck me. Sorry I asked."

He squeezes her hand a little tighter as they keep going.

* * *

Maybe it's all the endless nothingness, but random thoughts keep popping into Jyn's head as they struggle forward. The way back had started to level out. She's not sure if that's a good thing or not.

"Cassian?"

He grunts an answer. His eyes are scanning something ahead. They're still on a road, at least. They hadn't wandered off into a field or something during this lovely "white out".

"If this was a movie… like, this whole situation we're in now, if it was a movie, how do you think we'd get rescued?"

It's his turn to nearly trip and stumble. He kicks at the ground, scraping the snow down with the sole of his shoe.

"Tire track," he says.

She blinks then looks. Yes. It's a frozen tire track. If she wasn't numbed through and through, her ice cube little heart might have skipped a beat

"His?" she asks. "Ours?"

"Someone's. Impossible to say how long it's been, but it could be ours... And it would be by helicopter."

Jyn takes a few seconds to process all of this.

"Helicopter?"

"Yes."

Oh, he means the movie. Yeah, that would be a nice plot twist wouldn't it?

"We'd be rescued by a helicopter? In all this snow? During an, ahem, a 'white out'? You sure about that?"

He prompts her forward with a tug on her hand.

"Mhmhmm. Hollywood special effects. Helicopter swoops down, drops us that chain ladder, and we hold on as it carries us through the sky. It would make for a real dramatic moment."

"Sounds expensive. Snow mobile may be more in line for us."

"Nope. We'd get the big-budget treatment, Jyn. Total blockbuster."

He starts steering them to the left, diverting them from what looks like the main road

She hums absently, visualizing the warm insides of a climate controlled anything.

"Do you know where we're going?"

Not that it matters. They stop walking, they die, so they might as well keeping on going until they collapse.

"It's this way, Jyn. I can feel it in my bones. We're close."

Oh. Good. Because the only thing Jyn can feel in her bones is the threat of impending 'limb death' but she likes Cassian's upbeat version of reality far better.

* * *

"Cassian ?"

Whatever he had been feeling in his bones wasn't exactly as close as she would have liked. Another ten minutes of miserable cold and post-holing torture have gone by, but his optimism was kind of infectious. Or maybe she's just finally losing her mind from the stress of it all. Either way works.

"Little more, Jyn. Just a little more. Stick we me."

"Oh I'm not going anywhere. As long as we stay together, we'll be alright. We can get through anything together."

She doesn't realize how uncharacteristically saccharine her words were until Cassian pauses mid-post to turn to her.

"That's… true. Erso. Yes."

He looks so… touched. Frozen, but also overwhelmed by sentiment.

Well shit, maybe they should kiss? They haven't ever before, yet here they are practically forming a death pact with each other. 'No matter what we're going to go out together'.

Okay, maybe they hadn't exactly said _that_ , but this is the way things are going down. And Jyn really doesn't want to freeze to death without at least rounding first base with him.

So reaches up and yanks his cowl down off his face. His lips are more blue than pink.

"Jyn?"

"You know what else we'd do if this was our movie?"

Cassian must be a quicker study than she is, because he immediately gets it. He steps forward, pulling her into his arms.

"Good start?"

"Perfect. Keep going."

"So bossy, Erso."

Cassian presses his lips to hers.

His breath warms the space between her upper lip and nose. There's sort of a sense of pressure. That's about it.

He pulls away, looking displeased. She smacks her lips together. They make a noise but she can't feel them.

"Did you… how was it for you?" he asks.

She shakes her head and pats his chest, her hands sounding like drumbeats against all his many layers.

"Didn't feel a damn thing, Andor. But we tried, at least. Good effort."

His frown deepens and his hands catch her wrists before she can pull away.

" _So_ ," he begins and she loves his accent right now with that sharp syllable more than ever before. "The movies lied to us. That was supposed to be our big moment. The one where the camera pans in really close and they start playing that terrible music."

Jyn is simply so fond of him at this moment. There's no one else in the whole world she would rather freeze to death with. Or numbly mash frozen lips to frozen lips with.

"Did you hear about the kiss in the original Spiderman? The famous one in the rain one? Apparently it wasn't sexy at all. Spidey kept getting water in his nose and the he had to hang upside-down for take after take. Ours was still better."

Cassian lets go of her wrists, turning and taking one of her hands in his own.

"I demand a do-over when we get to the car," he informs her.

"Oh. _Deal_. Absolutely a deal. We get back to the car and it's go-time. We've got to celebrate being alive, boss."

He snorts, leading them once more through the endless white. He seems to have a direction in mind. It's all a lighter shade of pale to her. Snow on the trees. Snow in the air. Snow on the ground.

Snow, and deeper tire tracks.

These stand out even through the layers of white. These ones are different. They've really sunk in deep, spinning and corkscrewing like they-

"This is where we spun out!" she cries, hardly daring to believe her eyes.

It is. Spiral after spiral of perfect loops. It has to be from them, from when the Jeep had darted off to the side and they SUV had played the road like a skating rink.

"They start uphill," Cassian says, following their looping path. "They start uphill and we ended uphill. Then we reversed and that means-"

"Our car must be there. Down that side road."

Side road? Well, there's a side streak of white between a thicket of pines. Has it really snowed that much since they set out that morning?

Never mind. Jyn doesn't want to know the answer to that.

They both break out into a run, slogging with renewed and now nearly frantic enthusiasm to get back to their one last remaining place of salvation.

A little more. More struggling, more post holing, more white on white until-

There it is.

Their SUV, laying lifelessly right where they left her. Never before could Jyn imagine the sight of a wrecked car could fill her with so much joy.

"Full circle, Cassian."

He smiles in reply, the corners of his eyes crinkling because that's all she can see peeking out from under his hood.

* * *

Author's Note:

Eeek, I know this update is extremely late but this chapter really fought me. I just couldn't get it right and I think I had to rewrite the middle half maybe three or four times before I got there, so I hope it came out okay?

One more chapter to go for our intrepid and frostbitten bounty hunters to find a way off this mountain. And I think it's high time for Cassian to take Jyn up on her stay-warm strategy.


End file.
